[pc86]

I have never had issues with this approach. Yeah you'll get a few people who think they're being cute about wanting to schedule a call or whatever, but when it comes down to it "I don't move forward without knowing the budgeted range for a position" gets me a number probably 19 out of 20 times, almost always the first time too.

[t0mas88]

It makes no sense at all for the company or recruiter to hide the range for you. Because they would be wasting their timing doing all kinds of meetings if your expected number is far above that range.

[pc86]

I don't think the company with the $120-150k range is trying to hide it from the person who wants $200k, I think they're trying to hide it from the person who wants $110k. If you tell them $200k they just stop talking to you. If you tell them $110k they write it down and carry along with the process and a little green $110k next to your name.

[phpisthebest]

Actually they are hoping to snag the person that has extreme wage compression, working a 85K job that is worth 150K, who they can get for 95K...

[pc86]

That's exactly what I said with different numbers.

[bomewish]

This kind of strategy seems a bizarre one for a company. "Let's figure out how to systematically pay our employees less than they're really worth." How is that any kind of long-term plan? To really move the needle you'd have to do it a LOT -- but then you've selected on employees who lack knowledge about their own power. Those are going to be systematically different (probably not in a good way?) from employees who are more proactive and entrepreneurial about negotiating. Wouldn't you prefer a whole lot of the latter type? Since they will presumably be better at solving open-ended problems, etc. etc.?

[abwizz]

> This kind of strategy seems a bizarre one for a company. "Let's figure out how to systematically pay our employees less than they're really worth."

so we established that the revenue of the company belongs to the employees that worked for it, but the company has to skimm at least the operating costs before payout as otherwise it would make a loss.

but most companies have an obligation to make profit, so there is no other way than to pay the employees less than what they're worth (because increasing revenue would also increase the value of employees accordingly)

please tell me where i'm wrong

[pdonis]

> you've selected on employees who lack knowledge about their own power

Which is the majority of employees. Because...

> employees who are more proactive and entrepreneurial about negotiating

...aren't going to remain employees for too long; they are going to end up starting their own businesses because they realize that the upside is so much greater. Which means, first, that, to them, the job at your company is not a career; it's a temporary day job while they get set up to pursue their real goal. And second, that at any given time these kinds of employees will be a fairly small minority of all the people in the job market.

[slikrick]

> actually

they were really trying. this site is so strange.

[deckard1]

Some companies seem to lie about their top range number as well. If you pass the interview and ask you for a figure and you come back with their top range number, suddenly there are reasons you shouldn't be making that. I strongly suspect they have no intention of giving out that amount but are instead using it to entice people that are willing to accept less than they are worth. It plants the idea that one day you will be making that much at the company if you accept less for now.

[pc86]

This happened to me, range was $x-y for a position I was very well qualified for. They wanted 6-8 YOE while I had 12, I had 5+ years familiarity with the business domain alone, experience in all the tech, demonstrable experience doing what they wanted to do in the next 2 years. Comes time for salary negotiation and their first offer is exactly in the middle of X and Y not surprisingly. I list all the above, say it's pretty clear to me Y is a fair offer not to mention a pay cut from where I'm coming from (which had the added benefit of being true).

Basically they refused to pay me Y because there were folks working there who had been at the company for a while and weren't making that, with very little other justification. We eventually settled on a signing bonus to make up ~80% of the difference, and I got a raise that surpassed that difference within the first year. But I probably wouldn't have taken the role without the bonus and probably would have left within the first year without the raise.

It's still not clear to me why they listed that range if their justification for not paying the top of it was a set of factors that would have been the same for any applicant.

[RhodesianHunter]

Probably different people responsible for coming up with the range and for making offers.

[HDThoreaun]

Or maybe the top of the range is for candidates that get 5 star ratings from every interviewer and you got some 4s?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

It makes some sense to hide it, because they're not just hiding it from you. They're hiding it from all candidates, and a policy of telling everyone (or hiding from everyone) can have an effect on just what sort of candidates they get.

If, in exceptional circumstances, they would pay 30% more than everyone else, they might want to hide this. Instead of saying "we do 95% to 135% of what everyone else offers", they say "we do 95% to 105% of what everyone else offers"... and suddenly they get fewer cranks and weirdos. But they still have the option of offering that 30% more, if they stumble upon some diamond in the rough.

They might want to, even if showing would bring in a few more good candidates. Is it disturbing the signal to noise ratio so much that it takes far longer and costs more to go through the whole process.

Of course, just because it might work this way in theory, it doesn't mean that it does in practice, especially consistently. So, it could be them chasing bad strategy that they can't determine to be bad strategy.

If they have a few more bad assumptions (like "our stated range is still good enough to get the decent candidates"), then they might be even more inclined to hide the range.

They're working through all sorts of bad tradeoffs too, just like you.